What shall we talk about? Harry Reid using the word "Negro " or about the War or about civilians being sacrificed so a few Terrorists are killed. Should we talk about the Blackwater Scandal which Obama inherited & is contributing to by keeping these thugs on the payroll.

Michael Steele calls for Harry Reid to resign on "Fox News Sunday."

Melissa Harris-Lacewell discusses with Rachel Maddow the U.S. Census Bureau's use of the word "Negro".

Blackwater scandal continues when will Obama deal with it. He is the Commander In Chief so he has some say over these issues-suspend their contracts and claw back as much of what they have been paid . Put Erik Prince in irons send him to Guantanamoand let him under go some Torture-Lite as developed by Torquemada AKA Dick Cheney.

Trent Lott was longing for an era when structural barriers were the norm. Reid was enthusiastic that the same barriers were lessening.

Republicans hope that reports of Reid's old gaffe might derail his leadership of the health care reform package. But watching Michael Steele go after Reid is more bizarre than convincing. Steele seems to pride himself on the liberal use of black discursive patterns. It's hard to take seriously the moral outrage of a self-professed "hip-hop Republican" who explains his tenure as GOP chairman saying "brother still here."

President Obama may be unconcerned and the GOP may be transparently race baiting, but Reid's comments did create a legitimate queasiness among many Americans that is worth exploring.

But let's be honest, if we weeded out every public official guilty of racial insensitivity, the halls of Congress would echo with utter emptiness. The point is not so much public gaffes as it is the creation, support, and maintenance of systemic and structural inequalities. This is why Trent Lott's wistfulness about a Strom Thurmond presidency is in a different class than Reid's comments. Lott was longing for a bygone era when structural barriers and entrenched inequality were the norm. Reid was enthusiastic that the same barriers were lessening and that America was ready, albeit with caveats, for a new racial reality.

Harry Reid says Negro versus Trent Lott & Strom Thurmond In so many words argued that 'If segregation were still in force America would be better off'.

From U.S. Census writers to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a racial designation long abandoned seems to be making a comeback.

Michael Steele, the first African-American to lead the Republican Party, saw his opening, calling for Reid to step down from his role as majority leader, and comparing Reid's racial insensitivity to the remarks made by former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who was forced to resign his post after remarks made at the 100th birthday party of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, who, like Lott represented the state of Mississippi.

Now, wait just a minute. There's no excuse for Reid's choice of words (for which he's apologized to the president and any African-American leader who will still take his calls). But there's also no equivalent between what Reid said and what Lott told attendees at the Thurmond party.

In 1948, Thurmond ran for president on a segregationist platform. At the 2002 birthday party, Lott toasted Thurmond, saying, "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

One of the most notorious crimes of the civil rights era took place in Mississippi: the murders of three civil rights workers in the town of Philadelphia.

What Reid did was shrewdly assess the reasons why white people would find Obama to be an acceptable candidate based on their own prejudices, revealing his own in the process. I mean, really -- "Negro dialect"?! That's a term that brings to mind the black dialogue written by whites in an era gone by: think Jim in Huckleberry Finn, or purported transcriptions of the Br'er Rabbit tales, which were originally spoken-word stories told by slaves.

...The discomfort of Republicans with Reid's remarks goes even deeper, I believe, than the naked opportunism displayed by Michael Steele. However offensively he expressed it, Reid put his finger on some identifying factors of white racism. As awful as his remarks are for their profound insensitivity, they bear no relation to those of the former senator from Mississippi who essentially said that America wouldn't be in such a fix if it was still a racially-segregated nation. The only thing that Reid's remarks have with Lott's is that they were both about race. It's time to stop equating Lott's paen to segregation with Reid's self-revelatory assessment of white prejudice.